MShift's browser-based interface gives developers a lot of control and
capability for building wireless applications. Unfortunately, the process
is not very automated, so it can take quite a while to get this design
environment up and running correctly.
MShift's MobileShift Toolkit lets developers build wireless sites
either by deriving them from an existing Web site or by basing them on
a design layout. An MShift solution targets devices by their supported
markup languages (HDML or WML for cell phones, HTML or CHTML for PDAs and
pagers). You can then customize the display for particular devices' screens.
The platform supports 137 international languages, including many that
use large character sets, such as Japanese.
Projects involve four levels of development: Commands, Cards, Decks,
and Stacks. Commands are the single instructions used to display and process
information; they let the developer, for example, insert images and button
actions. Cards are similar to HDML or WDL cards, which correspond to a
single screen on a cell phone and are made up of a set of Commands. Decks
are a collection of Cards that handles a specific interaction between the
device and the site, such as a purchase or a database query. Stacks, which
are usually associated with a specific device or Web site, contain a group
of Decks.
The developer must have a precise idea of how the information will be
processed and displayed before creating the corresponding Decks, Cards,
and Commands. Not much of the development process is automatic--the Web
designer must explicitly describe the flow of information for each wireless
interaction. Compared with other platforms we reviewed, MShift's approach
is much more code-intensive, aimed at people who are comfortable hand-coding
HTML pages as opposed to those who prefer WYSIWYG development environments.
What the MobileShift Toolkit lacks in automation, however, it makes
up for by offering more granular control than most of the other wireless
solutions we looked at. The MShift system allows complete control over
every aspect of the information collected, processed, and displayed on
the device. Commonly used functions are built in or, alternatively, the
developer can enter specific HDML, HTML, or WML tags. The MobileShift Toolkit
can handle cookies, redirects, and even custom referrers (the URL of the
page a user came from).
MShift's Web-based environment allows for distributed development, and
the thorough help system makes for a very quick learning curve. But command-by-command
entry for every line of text, form field, and processing instruction drastically
slows down the construction of a wireless page.
Once our test taxi-driver application was built for the PDA, RIM pager,
and WAP phone, we ran it on each device to see how MShift's MobileShift
Engine performed. The application performed well on all functions except
JavaScript validations and alerts. Because very few wireless devices currently
support JavaScript, it's up to the mobile application server to handle
JavaScript and send the appropriate results to the device, something MShift
doesn't do.
Once all the Commands are created for a particular site and deployed
for production, the MobileShift Engine handles request calls from wireless
devices. The MobileShift Engine can be either self-hosted or hosted by
MShift as an ASP solution. The product detects which device is making the
request through which gateway (and in what language), stores cookie and
session information if necessary, processes the appropriate Commands for
the page, and serves up the proper response page to the wireless device
in the correct language and format. Like Aether,
the MobileShift Engine does automatic image conversion, which allowed for
very fast, beautiful image scaling and rendering.
Product: MShift
Rating: 
Price: MobileShift Technology Suite, including MobileShift Engine
and MobileShift Toolkit, $5,000 to $200,000;
Company: MShift; Company
Info, San Jose, CA; 408-437-2740; www.mshift.com
